Newton Developer Technical Information: Newton Programmer's Guide: 2.1 OS Addendum /

Chapter 11 - Miscellaneous / Reference

Functions and Methods / System Services

BatteryStatus

BatteryStatus(which)

Returns a status frame for the specified battery.

which

An integer identifying the battery for which to return status information. The value 0 specifies the primary battery pack.

return value

A status frame; see DISCUSSION.

DISCUSSION

The status frame returned contains the following slots:

batteryType

Contains one of the following symbols, or an integer: 'alkaline Battery is standard alkaline.

'nicd Battery is nickel-cadmium.

'nimh Battery is nickel-metal hydride.

'lithium Battery is lithium.

batteryVoltage

A real number giving the current battery voltage.

batteryCapacity

An integer, indicating the percentage of a full charge that the battery contains.

batteryLow

An integer, indicating the percentage of a full charge at which the "low battery" warning should be triggered by the system.

batteryDead

An integer, indicating the percentage of a full charge at which the "dead battery" warning should be triggered and the unit shut down by the system.

batteryCurrent

A real number indicating the current drain, in milliamps. This slot is nil if the battery is charging. This slot is new in 2.1.

acPower

Contains a symbol ('yes or 'no) indicating whether or not the unit has AC power applied. Note that this does not imply that the battery is charging. See chargeState to determine that.

acVoltage

A real number giving the AC voltage being supplied by an AC adapter, or nil if AC power is not supplied.

chargeState

Contains one of the following symbols, or an integer: 'notCharging The battery is not charging.

'discharging The battery is discharging.

'preliminaryCharging The battery is charging under a pulsed duty schedule that raises its voltage to a level at which it can be efficiently fast-charged. This charging mode is used initially for charging a heavily discharged battery.

'fastCharging The battery is fast-charging.

'trickleChargeContinuous or 'trickleCharging The battery is fully charged and is being maintained in that state by trickle-charging.

chargeRate

Reserved for future use.

chargeCurrent

A real number indicating the current, in milliamps, being supplied to charge the battery, if it is charging. If the battery is discharging, this is the current supplied from the battery to the system.

ambientTemp

A real number indicating the ambient temperature in degrees Celsius.

batteryTemp

A real number indicating the battery temperature in degrees Celsius.

Note

A nil value for a slot means the underlying hardware cannot supply this information. The slots containing symbol values (batteryType, chargeState, acPower) may contain integers if the battery driver returned something other than the values listed here.

COMPATIBILITY

The return value of this function is changed from its Newton 2.0 OS implementation. The batteryCurrent slot is new and the possible symbol values for the chargeState slot are different.